Discovering the adversary, one day at a time

CT Strategy

March 03, 2013

"Railing against military incompetence and intelligence failures is no substitute for constructing a policy that recognizes the limitations of armed force and espionage. Though they lack the dramatic appeal of air raids and secret agents, diplomacy and law enforcement must be the cornerstones of any successful attempt to contain international terrorism."

When was this written? Hint: Highlight the spacee underneath the line.

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1989

Source: Best Laid Plans: The Inside Story of America's War Against Terrorism (Martin and Walcott)

August 23, 2012

In April 2002, the FBI warned banks in northeastern states of a “physical attack”:

"The United States government has received unsubstantiated information that unspecified terrorists are considering physical attacks against US financial institutions in the Northeast -- particularly banks -- as part of their campaign against US financial interests," the FBI said in a statement.

"While the FBI has no information about any specific plot or threats to any specific institution, out of an abundance of caution, an alert has been transmitted to law enforcement and to financial institutions."

It was the second warning of its kind made by federal officials this week. The first was prompted by an anonymous telephone call received Sunday from the Netherlands through Canada that later turned out to be a false alarm.

The alert focused on Washington and the states of Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.

The FBI said the decision to issue the alert followed was made after if consultations with the Department of Justice, the Office of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department.

Attorney General John Ashcroft explained the US government was not asking the banks to close, or urging people to stay away from them.

"We are alerting law enforcement, financial institutions, and the American people to be vigilant, and to be aware of anything that appears suspicious," he said in a statement. The attorney general said he was not aware of any specific threat to any specific financial institution.

But he pointed out that during the war against terrorism, the United States had developed numerous sources of new information and was constantly analyzing and assessing intelligence received from them.

Ashcroft did not disclose what theses sources of new information were.

But a US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the information that prompted the warning came in part from Abu Zubaydah, the suspected chief of al Qaeda operations, who was captured in Pakistan and turned over to US authorities earlier this month.

The official emphasized, however, that the FBI was accurate in qualifying the information it had received was unsubstantiated.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week Zubaydah was "a fountain of knowledge" about al-Qaeda's operations.

Following the warning, a local news station sent a reporter into the branch office of a regional bank on K Street and interviewed the manager about the warning. That warning, like so many to follow, faded into memory. Except, perhaps, for the branch manager who had his 20 seconds of local fame, thanks in part to Abu Zubaydah.

Then in July 2004, Pakistan arrested Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani outside of Rawalpindi, along with 15 other suspects “from Africa.” Along with the suspects, came the requisite laptops and portable drives. Soon after the arrest, authorities recovered reconnaissance reports that made it clear that al-Qaida possessed a well-developed plot to attack “banks.” Not your local branch, however, but major financial institutions like the World Bank.

"This was a planning proposal in the pre-operation phase, including surveillance and plans for attacking. It was typical of a group-level operation that needs to be approved at Bin Laden's level," the source said. It is unclear whether these attacks had been approved.

The buildings apparently named as targets were the Citigroup Centre and the Stock Exchange in New York, the International Monetary Fund and World Bank buildings in Washington, and Prudential Financial's headquarters in Newark. Police in each city were searching cars and lorries approaching the buildings yesterday. In New York, the Holland tunnel, leading to Manhattan's financial district, was closed to heavy commercial vehicles.

US intelligence officials quoted in the US press say the new information shows that scouting had been done to identify security in and around these buildings; the best places for reconnaissance; how to make contact with employees who work in the buildings; traffic patterns; and locations of hospitals and police departments.

Some of the reconnaissance was extremely detailed, even including the number of pedestrians who walked past on each side of the street in a minute. Reconnaissance is thought to have been carried out over several years, both before and after the attacks of September 11 2001.

A US intelligence official told the Guardian yesterday the new information provided a "remarkable level of clarity" about al-Qaida operations.

The official, speaking anonymously, said that the new intelligence included "extensive information about activities that have taken place - about the casing and surveillance of the targets, their vulnerabilities and perceived vulnerabilities, the optimal ways to carry out an attack and to bring down buildings, types of security personnel ... it's very detailed."

The intelligence official added: "The indications are that has been a very longstanding effort on the part of al-Qaida. It dated to before September 11, and probably continues to this day."

US officials, quoted in the Washington Post, said that al-Qaida scouts had found that one of the buildings being cased had three male security guards but that only one carried a weapon. "Getting up to the higher floors is not very difficult if you go there midweek, as I did," one of the scouts reported, according to the seized computer files.

The author of those reports? Dhiren Barot, aka Issa al-Hindi. His audience? Khalid Sheik Mohammed. Al-Hindi had UK citizenship, and perfect jihadi credentials. Trained and indoctrinated at LeT camps in Pakistan in the 1990s, he fought Indian troops in Kashmir. He later move on to train in al-Qaida recruits in Afghanistan. Al-Hindi traveled to the US, recorded extensive video of Stock Exchange buildings in New York City. In 1998, Bharot wrote Army of Madinah in Kashmir, an auto-biographical account of his time with the LeT in Kashmir. Al-Hindi was arrested in the UK in August 2004.

In al-Hindi, we see one of the strongest connections between LeT and AQ. However, it's not the only one. Piece together disparate plots from the US, UK and Australia, and a broader (if still unclear) picture hints at a long-term collaborative effort between the two groups. LeT and AQ’s relationship pre-dates 9/11, and suggests a level of cooperation that could be the primary reason AQ survived after the loss of its safe haven in 2001. I wonder if we even considered that contingency before or immediately after the Taliban fell.

Between 2002 and 2008, there were numerous incidence where the open source line between LeT and AQ seemed to blur. KSM dispatched Issa al-Hindi to America to scope out “banks.” Sajid Mir sent Willie Brigitte to Australia. Suspects in Operation Pendennis trained in LeT camps; Hamid Hayat trained in a “militant” camp in Pakistan for an attack on "financial institutions" in the United States. Were these AQ plots? LeT plots? Who was behind this seemingly ongoing effort to create havoc in major western cities? Are they still active?

Were there any operational connections between the plots? Any shared strategy? Shared resources? There’s also this lingering question about Abu Zubaydah and his interrogators. How much did he know about the Banks plot? Was he evading his interrogators in April 2002? Did they misinterpret him? Could we have uncovered it sooner? I doubt there are ready answers to these questions. However, the disparity between what we knew in 2002 and what we discovered in 2004 will always bother me. It represents a dangerous gap in knowledge that may have led to an major terrorist attack had it not been for Ghailani's arrest.

April 22, 2012

Part one of the 2d edition of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s autobiography - Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet (Knights2) - is 560 pages in translation. Written during Zawahiri’s 60th year, the text is a broad, personal look at life inside (what I will call for the sake of this post) the global jihad movement. Its scale challenges the reader to sit and read, closely, its many, somewhat confusing sections, and to think about writer and his reasons for writing. It also challenges the reader to consider why they are reading it.

This may sound like a frivolous academic exercise, but the reasons why we read any jihadi-salafi “text” touch the core of why anyone would study jihadi-salafi movements (jihad studies, for short) in the first place. We read to understand - to make sense of - a phenomenon that touches tens of millions of lives in complex global play of piety, personalities, and geopolitics, the dynamics of which seem to change daily.

I've done close readings on several documents since I starting blogging in 2004, including Hassan al-Banna's Toward the Light, Issa al-Hindi's Army of Madinah in Kashmir, and an unfinished attempt at Martyrs in a Time of Alienation. The goal of close reading a text like Knights2 is to understand the text as it is written. My role as the reader, then, is to simply read closely without prejudice in order to make sense of the text and what it can tell us about its author and the movement he leads.

By contrast, intelligence analysts are trained in what I call “defensive reading.” In intelligence work, an adversary’s media product (text) is scrutinized for any intelligence value. The text is something to be exploited (“mined”) for “actionable intelligence.” To devote months of personal time to a single text in order to build a scholarly understanding would be an unthinkable waste of time and dwindling financial resources. Generally, once a text has been exploited for its intelligence value, analysts never pursue it again.

However, when it comes to reading a long text like Knights2, an analyst is ill-served by their utilitarian tendencies (what I call “analytical utilitarianism”) and professional skepticism. The point of reading a large text like Knights2 isn't to glean "actionable intelligence," but instead to build the analyst's professional knowledge of jihadi-salafi milieu, and to add to their understanding of this remarkable phenomenon -- its history, personalities, and their motivations, etc -- and to share that insight with an interested audience.

The resulting tension between analytical utilitarianism and the kind of qualitative analysis that relies on in-depth knowledge of the jihadi-salafi text remains unresolved at present, posing several challenges.

First, jihad studies lacks a super structure of analytical norms and commonly accepted facts that would distinguish it from other, more established, disciplines. As a result, its practice easily becomes a mishmash of historicism, new historicism, post-colonialism, and amateur exegetical discourse that unconsciously scavenges freely across disciplines but never fits fully into any of them. From the perspective of established disciplines such as sociology or literary criticism, such eclecticism undermines the jihad scholar’s credibility. Jihad studies needs to leave its youthful wandering among the disciplines and find a place of its own.

Without establishing epistemological identity that distinguishes it from other disciplines, such as Middle East Studies, the nascent discipline of jihad studies could be reabsorbed into its multidisciplinary parent sources such as foreign policy or sociology, as students seek to find a job that will provide a paycheck and an opportunity to learn and grow as professionals. Without a distinct identity represented through an association or other types of formal and informal communities, the profession could fade completely as a distinctive elucidative source in foreign, military and public policy. And the jihadi “text” will remain subjected to the whims of analytical utilitarianism.

A second challenge is in the academic institutional culture. In a September 2011 interview at Abu Muqawama, Thomas Hegghammer briefly articulates the extent of the challenges facing jihad studies, specifically United States’ failure to produce a cadre of scholars, drawing from ideas discussed in a 2008 article:

There is a core of specialists who continue to do fantastic work, and we see some new recruitment to the field. But the community is still very small and populated mostly by people who are on the fringes of the academy, institutionally speaking (and that includes myself)......A related problem is that jihadism studies in the US lack an institutional home. The Combating Terrorism Center at West Point has partly filled this role, but even the CTC has rarely had more than one or two Arabic-speaking al-Qaida specialists based at West Point at any one time; several of the CTC’s best reports were written by off-site contractors. Another potential hub for al-Qaida studies was the Centre on Law and Security at New York University, but it recently scaled down its activities and looks set to close downHow America – with its huge academic workforce and enormous counterterrorism budget – in ten years has failed to produce a research institution with more than two permanent jihadism specialists is beyond me. [emphasis mine]

I share his astonishment. He also identifies one of the primary “disincentives” stifling the development of jihad studies:

The fundamental problem is still the same, namely that the incentive structure in the universities, especially in America, is set against people specialising in the study of jihadi groups. Studying al-Qaida usually involves qualitative methods and requires high-level skills in Arabic or some other oriental language. Graduate students with an interest in jihadism thus work against two strong biases: the quantitative methods hegemony in the social sciences and the skepticism in American Middle East Studies toward the study of hard security issues. These biases affect hiring decisions and have some striking aggregate effects: for example, there are virtually no tenured faculty specialising in terrorism (let alone jihadism) in any Ivy League school or in any Middle East Studies department in America. Rational graduate students with academic ambitions see this and wisely stay clear of the topic.

I would also add to the list of disincentives a third challenge: the paucity of access to jihadi-salafi media. Servers that host the material are attacked, files removed. In some countries, such as Great Britain and soon France, merely reading or keeping copies of this material can be a criminal act. Lack of knowledge of foreign languages such as Arabic is also a barrier, but it goes hand-in-hand with the lack of quality translations. Talented students who may have interest in the topic could be turned off by the frustrating lack of primary source material in English and other Western languages.

I would emphasize the troubling developments in Great Britain and France (and here in the US) which represents a fourth challenge. The criminalization of access and possession of jihadi-salafi media could relegate the study of global jihad movements to the interests of national security. Under such laws any scholarly research could be called into question by security organizations, creating an environment where scholars are at the will of security agencies for access to such material. Any effort to disengage jihad studies from its utilitarian function could founder in the face of draconian laws against the collection and storage of jihad media.

I’m certain others are more sanguine about the future prospects of jihad studies, and would welcome any contrarian opinions (I’m opening up the comments section below). I'm pessimistic about the future of jihad studies, because I see it through the lens of nearly two decades in a long-established profession (library science). With its own professional schools, associations, peer-reviewed publications, etc, library science offers numerous formal outlets to exchange new ideas, recruit young talent and adapt to changes. Jihad studies faces its own challenges, but without a clear identity or organizational cohesion.

Why does this matter? Professional societies provide leadership and accountability needed to identify challenges and redirect financial and intellectual resources to tackle them. For example, library science professionals faced tough challenges to their relevance throughout the 1990s. It also faced a demographic crisis that I discussed in my book in 2000. The profession survived both crises primarily because professional associations focused financial and intellectual resources to address them. Now, library science rpofessional once again face difficult crises, and its anyone’s guess what will happen, but the social infrastructure is in place to address them. I see none of this for jihad studies.

Jihad studies has no association, no professional leadership, and no financial support mechanism. Any effort to strengthen the profession should begin with the creation of a scholarly society, and an accountable leadership that seeks to advocate, raise funds and begin to address issues such as state attempts to control access to jihad media, and the recruitment and retention of ambitious scholars. I’m not claiming this would be easy -- the legal, financial hurdles are immense -- but I’m not sure there is any other way to do it.

Scholars drawn to study the global jihad movement are few, because of its breathtaking demands: knowledge of foreign languages, history, religion, politics, and foreign policy are essential to the general approach to jihad studies. The scope of knowledge (multidisciplinary, operational, quantitative and qualitative) required to command basic facts is exhausting. The daily research required to maintain a grasp of the movement’s global ebbs and flows is daunting. Yet the few drawn to it love it, and I suspect, would dedicate much of their waking lives to it if they had the opportunity. It may be an elite, but it’s an elite dedicated to a new profession that deserves a future. However, I’m concerned that time may have already run out on the hope of their ever being a scholarly profession that is dedicated to the study of the global jihad movement.

Update #1: I notice that some commenters (via Twitter and e-mail, too) equate jihad studies with that of the study of militancy and terrorism. I understand militancy and terrorism as studies in behavior and social science, not jihad studies. The confusion is understandable because jihad studies is often integrated into the study of militancy and terrorism for obvious reasons. That confusion goes to the heart of the problem: what is jihad studies? Without an answer, any definition will do.

Also note that distinquishing jihad studies from other related disciplines doesn't reject the validity of other disciplines or the need for an interdisciplinary approach. On the contrary, a defined discipline can easily integrate other disciplines into its ontology. For instance, many of my early professors of medieval English participated in archeological digs in the UK. Archeology has a legitimate place in the qualitative study of medieval civilization. However, jihad studies doesn't have an ontology (yet).

August 06, 2011

Here and there in the midst of American society you meet with men full of a fanatical and almost wild spiritualism, which hardly exists in Europe. From time to time strange sects arise which endeavor to strike out extraordinary paths to eternal happiness. Religious insanity is very common in the United States.

I was at a local discount store the other day, where I saw a common sight here in Northern Virginia: a woman in a niqab. An African-American woman, wearing a niqab, was standing at the customer service counter trying to return an item. The customer service rep - another African american woman - was straining to understand her. Both were so engaged in the transaction that only the woman’s young daughter - adorned in a hijab - noticed me observing the transaction. The customer service rep was clearly uncomfortable with the transaction. Having worked a similar job, I could sympathize with her. Part of deciding whether to accept an item for return is assessing the customer’s sincerity, a nearly impossible task if you can’t see the person’s face. The niqab is a discomforting site for many people, but it very rarely poses a threat to the “public order."

Among American Muslims the niqab is shrugged off as an expression of extreme practice, but not much more. The community of women who wear niqab may be small, but more important, it is part of a broad and variable continuum of Muslim religious practice. In other words it is just one idiosyncratic expression of faith among many.

Anyone who sincerely practices an Abrahamic faith recognizes those co-religionists who perhaps take it a little too far. For the most part, they inspire indifference. Idiosyncratic characteristics of all three Abrahamic faiths lend themselves to America’s vibrant faith life. America has become home to many communities of extreme practice that co-exist in mutual indifference with everyone else. They echo de Tocqueville’s idea of America’s unique “religious insanity.”

Not so the government of France which has been meddling in the conscience of its Muslim citizens since the first hijab controversy in 1989. But with its latest effort -- the 2010 national “burqa ban” -- the government tacitly accepts defeat in a decades-long engagement with Muslim communities within French society.

France’s much-admired intellectual and political classes apparently never fully engaged the country’s Muslim communities. Its collective arguments are generalized (women’s rights), condescending, (they’re forced to wear it), and weak (it’s counter to French “ideals”) when juxtaposed to extreme Islam’s powerful appeal to conscience. As a result, whatever engagement did occur had no effect on the religious practices of the most extreme of France’s Muslim community. One spoke post-structuralist jargon concerning the power of “symbols;” the other spoke of a personal relationship with God. Both spoke past each other. In the end, the French political class chose to imposed its view of Muslim religious practices through the full force of government.

There are lessons in France’s “burqa” and foulard laws for anyone involved in the current dialogue over counterterrorism strategy or counter violent extremism (CVE) policy. They are terrible policy, creating an artificial confrontation between government and citizens where none existed before. They ignore the true roots of radical Islam in both its intellectual and physical confrontation with secularism and secular governments. Its enforcement builds a long-term environment of mutual distrust and intellectual isolation that practically guarantees homegrown collective challenges to the state within a generation

July 20, 2011

Second, the scholarly and counterterrorism communities have narrowly approached the history of al-Qaeda through the lens of Peshawar and Arab precursor organizations, such as Maktab al-Khidamat (Afghan Services Bureau). Less credence and attention has been given to areas like Loya Paktia and Miram Shah, which functioned (and continue to function) as other centers of gravity for the mobilization and operational development of foreign war volunteers and future members of al-Qaeda. These areas, and the Haqqani Network's role in them, were not only more central to the operational development of al-Qaeda than Peshawar, but have also proved to be more enduring over time.

When the Taliban fell in late 2001, Al-Qaeda leadership fled to safehavens in Pakistan. Yet, we failed to dedicate as much effort into understanding local political and cultural dynamics within Pakistan as we did (eventually) in Iraq and Afghanistan. We're still paying the price. With limited pre-9/11 resources, and continually misdirected post-9/11 resources, Western analysts quickly lost site of the obvious.

May 24, 2011

Soon after Usama Bin Laden met his maker, a general consensus quickly developed in the counterterrorism community that al-Qaeda remained a threat to Western Europe, the Americas, and other allied nations. I agree, but I the killing UBL inspired me to ask the another question: if killing UBL won’t do in AQ (and it won’t) then what would it take to neutralize AQ?

I’ve drawn up a few notes on this topic, just to throw them out there to a wider audience, and perhaps generate a few new or unexplored ideas.

Threat #1: Fragmentation

AQ breaks apart for or a combination of reasons, including:

Leadership hubris (“ofermod”, an OE word, which may offer more precision than a contemporary English word), producing catastrophic operational failure(s). It could lead to loss of trust, morale, support.

Leadership decapitation. AQ's central leadership mitigates the inherent risks of losing a guy here or a guy there by developing a deep bench of potential leaders (see Army of Madinah Study, http://www.makingsenseofjihad.com/2007/09/under-a-beautif.html). When one guy goes down, there's usually another (with more experience) to fill the role. As a result, any decapitation program would have the goal of clearing the bench completely and quickly.

Ideological infiltration. individuals who introduce effective, viral ideas that challenge the foundations of AQ’s arguments for personally obligatory jihad against a global enemy, this could lead to ideological fragmentation, followed by organizational fragmentation.

Threat #2: Emergent Rivals

New, charismatic leaders with new ideas could stand to challenge AQ’s current model of global jihad, and speak to the aspirations of the young in a contemporary idiom that AQ may not possess. It could draw away followers, and perhaps produce the kind of internecine fighting that works to our advantage.

Threat #3: Money Woes

AQ suffers such dramatic financial woes, it ceases to operate without losing its patina of religious authority by relying on increasingly immoral or illegitimate means. Sources of wealth dissolution (however unlikely they are) include:

Regular individual donors dry up, either through outside political pressure, death of donors (and subsequent lack of interest from donor estates)

Recessionary factors drive donors to pull out of the jihad business (unlikely)

Threat #4: Loss of sanctuary

Through the magical powers of the miracle sparkle unicorns housed at Area 51, AQ could lose its Pakistan sanctuary. However, the impact of such an earth shattering possibility on the group may be less than expected, because its own operations are now so distributed that they could move to any number of global locales, or scatter once again.

March 10, 2011

Now that Twitter is my drug of choice, I’m basing this Around the Web edition on the numerous tweets I’ve favorited over the past few weeks.

While I was stoned on twitter, Leah at All Things Counterterrorismpublished an excellent article in Foreign Policy in the true counterterrorism tradition. I also agree with her assessment of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) - they are greatly underestimated, even after Mumbai.

Evgeny Morozov’s link to this Social Science Resource Council analysis of the religion in the Arab public sphere was quite popular.

The more I see “radicalization” applied in the real world, the less I’m willing to accept its legitimacy as a discipline within counterterrorism. Daveed posted a link to a Brennan Center for Justice report on radicalization that scratches the surface of this deepening crap pile.

The Arabist linked to this Guardian article on Egypt’s media revolution.

Steve’s link to the Flaming Oil Port Index gives you a bit of context on why we’re paying over $4 dollars for Premium.

February 19, 2011

My only college age memory of Mr. Dude comes through a pot-induced haze. A friend of a friend had a friend who was having a party off campus at this guy’s house. The owner of the house was “cool,” and they all called him Mr. Dude. The night wore on and my “date” was passed out on the couch. At some point the early 90s grunge music stopped. Mr. Dude pushed himself off the floor, stumbled over to the stereo, and fumbled around for a CD of the “hippest” music he had ever heard. We were going to love it. It was Jimi Hendrix...

From the onset of Egypt’s revolution, go-to Islamists, western talking heads, and any number of yammering academics were all beginning to sound a little out of step. Now, people die on the streets of Libya, Bahrain and Algeria. Libya, especially, looks inevtiable. As I write this the post-colonial narrative -- as it was taught to me in 1990 -- of an endless cycle of exploitation and suppression in the Middle East, South America and Central Asia, is finally coming to its much-deserved end.

A nationalist revolution shouldn’t happen in an Arab country, the narrative went. Supposedly Arabs never identified with the phony lines drawn by the colonial powers. They would were supposed to admire strong men and follow their religious leaders like gods. I’ve been skeptical of the post-colonial narrative since 1990, but I finally gave up on it completely after watching video the November 2010 soccer match between Algeria and Egypt.

As goal #4 went in and the joyous screams of "Masr! Masr!" filled the room, it was brutally obvious to me that there were plenty of Arabs who identified with the supposedly illegitimate borders drawn by those evil Westerners. And it's clear now that there’s no room on the soccer field for over-analysis of the Sykes-Picot accord. Perhaps the Algeria-Egypt soccer rivalry is a key source for the Egyptian revolt.

In his new audio message, Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, al-Qaeda’s number two and chief strategist, speaks of Sykes Picot and of godlessness of democracy. It sounds so quaint, as if he’s fighting a war that is long over. The music stopped about a week ago, and he’s slid the once-”hip” post-colonial CD into the stereo. I’ll call him Dr. Dude from now on.

To be honest, I was dreading my much-needed return to graduate school. Parroting Edward Said in order to pass my classes was, for the most part, the reason why I didn’t pursue any more graduate education. But without the weight of a “sonofabitch” to control the lives and defer the dreams of millions in Egypt and probably the rest of the Arab world, I now see paths of study that didn’t even exist one month ago: business and finance in dynamic economies, rancorous but peaceful civil institutions, and one that is close to my heart: sincere, organized inter-religious dialog, now untainted by the manipulations of state-sponsored media.

It’s a wonderful time to be alive. To watch global paradigms collapse twice - first “communism,” now “post-colonialism” -- just before I reached the half-way mark in my life is truly amazing. I don’t mind living in “interesting times.” If more people are made free by these “interesting times,” then, God, please, please make them even more interesting.

February 07, 2011

After reading the first paragraph of Dr. Metz's commentary at Thinking Strategically blog, I quickly did a screen search to confirm whether the words "Palin" and "tea party" are employed. Thankfully, no. However, he does build the foundation of his argument with this simple, condescending proposition: Americans are stupid; therefore our grand strategy is dumb and getting dumber.

Americans are "vulnerable to exploitation..." to "pundits and politicians" who deviously want to manipulate the masses into a frothing frenzy. And the ultimate result of their Svengali powers is a "growing domestic hostility toward Islam that is undercutting the foundation of America's global strategy." Really? Please tell me where outside the Beltway you find any American who takes pundits and politicians seriously.

I don't disagree with Metz's characterization of the Bush grand strategy. However, I do take issue with his assertion that this grand strategy relied "on questionable assumptions formed in the traumatic months after September 11th and never seriously analyzed." Having worked in various analytical and strategic positions throughout the Bush years, I think I can say with certainty that the Bush grand strategy was never fixed. It evolved all the time, unfortunately. Grand strategies should be applicable and fixed for some time in order for it to be employed. That didn't happen in the Bush years. Some agencies, like the FBI, never really found a strategy of their own. Particularly after 2004, the administration seemed adrift, trying to create something cohesive enough to outlast the transition to a new administration.

If Dr. Metz had stopped there, then his essay would be okay -- just something else to read in an already busy news day. Unfortunately, he doesn't stop there. Remember, he's building off the idea that Americans are stupid. So here it comes. Not only are we stupid, but some of us are "simply hardwired to hate." Like…Ted Nugent. Really? He's a rock star and meat eater. Most people listen to him play a stringed instrument or watch him use one on a deer. Is The Nuge the only example you can find? No Jihad Watch? No World Net Daily?

Also on his list of manipulators are "journalists, pundits, and broadcasters" who fail to understand the nuances of secular and Islamic governance. What Dr Metz never explains is why these folks matter. The only people who matter in any administration's regional and grand strategy are the strategists, analysts, and policy wonks employed to craft and execute those plans. Public opinion rarely matters on these issues (sorry, Nuge) until those strategies fail, sometimes with catastrophic consequences.

It doesn't stop with Ted Nugent. Dr. Metz then builds into a crescendo of ill-placed outrage. Apparently, Americans are "divided on their attitude toward Islam." So says a Washington Post-ABC News poll last year -- "the highest on record." Well, actually, no it isn't the "highest on record," Dr. Metz. It was the highest in that polls' record which only goes back to October 2001. If you want to really do some strategic thinking on the topic, you should perhaps look back on the ISNA and Gallup polling done since the early 1990s. There's also the outrage and opposition over the Cordoba House in NYC. This, too, is a sign that Americans are worked up into a frenzy by Ted Nugent and "propagandistic bloggers."

All of these boiling passions are supposedly sending a bad signal to the Muslim world. Metz here employs that ever-so condescending concept of a "Muslim world," as if all of Islam exists as a single culture and place, with all its citizens, like an alien race, collectively exercising some preternatural connection with America's wacky subcultures and posturing politicians:

With widespread opposition to the planned Cordoba House Islamic center in New York City, demonstrations against mosques across the country, and Koran burning ceremonies by fundamentalist ministers, passions are boiling. Muslims abroad are well aware of this. This undercuts the idea that America’s war is only with terrorists and not all Muslims. They feed the narrative of al Qaeda and its sympathizers that America and the West are at war with Islam itself. Condemnation of the Cordoba House by well known figures, including a number of prominent political leaders with electoral ambitions, mosque attacks, and Koran burning make a major contribution to the strategic communication of al Qaeda and other extremists.

There should be little room in grand strategy for Muslim caricatures. The sooner we get rid of the concept of the Muslim world, the better we'll be able to think through some of the toughest questions of the 21st century.

For his finale, Dr. Metz sets up a false dichotomy and then proceeds to offer the last best hope for the future:

Today American strategy has hit the wall, crumbling in the face of growing public hostility toward Islam. There are only two solutions. One would be to try and re-cage the tiger by constraining domestic mistrust and hostility toward Islam at least enough to sustain the global strategy….The alternative is to accept the notion that irresolvable differences exist between the United States and the Islamic world, and that the clash of civilizations is a reality.

So we either (1) blame Republicans ("Republican leaders, in other words, would have to abandon a theme which energizes and excites their political base, and give up on the notion of reviving the emotions of September 11 as elections approach") or (2) disengage from the Islamic world ("…shifting to a close rather than forward defense against terrorism.").

Americans are so stupid that there are no other options? Really? How sad.

January 31, 2011

Published in 1996, the excerpt of the following article calls for the implemention of shariah into community arbitration services as a means of "improving" the current legal system in the United States. Today it offers a fascinating peek into the pre-9/11 mindset of an American Islamist: "The time to begin conceptualizing our social and judicial institutions is now." The United States and Canada appear to offer endless opportunities for future implementation of Islamic law.

The article, "Community-Based Arbitration as a Vehicle for Implementing Islamic Law in the United States," begins with the premise that

we must not be content to cling to the predominate legal system, as it continues to slowly lapse deeper into semi-paralysis, choking on its own obstructive litigiousness…Through mediation and arbitration, the Muslim community may be able to design and implement a modified system of justice that would be responsive to its concern and the might evolve into a more comprehensive one in the future.

And then goes on to offer a method of employing community arbitration services as a means of introducing Shariah into the current legal system which the authors describe through analogy as "atrophying."

The article appears in the Spring/Summer 1996 issue of The Journal of Islamic Law, a quarterly published through the Takoma Park, MD-based non-profit called the Institute for Intercultural Relations. Sometime after 2000, the title changed to The Journal of Islamic Law and Culture, and it appears to have stopped publication after 2004, only to restart in 2008 as a monthly, and only to vanish again after an October 2009 issue.

Information on the Institute is more elusive than the publication. Originally operating in Takoma Park, MD, the organization had a DC-based address in 2009. Its editor appears to have held the position of General Counsel for the Corporation for National and Community Service, but his name no longer appears on the group's website.

I don't want you to think I'm cueing some ominous music to explain an Islamist group's maniacal plot to take over the US legal system. I have no analytical opinion on the issue of various Islamist plot and plans for domination -- they're so numerous they should count as their own genre. However, I do find the ideas expressed in this article, and in other articles from the same journal, to be fascinating. They provide a window into a "mainstream" American Islamist's mindset and intent long before September 11th altered the playing field for everyone.

January 19, 2011

I came across this April 2009 Le Figaroreport on the FBI’s new-found interest for things French. In it, Yves Jannier, a French counterterrorism judge, crows about French influence in FBI’s evolving CT approach.

“There has been an increase in the number of technical meetings between ex[perts from the two countries,” the report notes. “Last week French teams were at the American embassy in Paris to exchange information directly with their colleagues during the course of an encrypted videoconference...”

I have mixed emotions after reading this report.

US and French cooperation goes back a long time. And there’s been innumerable articles in the US press (random one here) on our post 9-11 Atlantic partnerships with the UK, France and other EU countries. However, I’ve never read one specifically about the Bureau before, and in the French press no less! Without knowing it, the article provides a good clue to the Bureau’s changes in CT approach. More sting operations, more arrests earlier in the radicalization "cycle."

I’m more than happy to see the Bureau finally grasp on to some strategy. When I was there in 2003, the Bureau and its phalanx of NSLU and DOJ attorneys were still drifting without a clear mandate, let alone a means of achieving it. Someone, at some point, grabbed the reigns and has sought solutions.

But did they have to be French solutions? With their draconian detention laws, and their unhealthy reliance on individual magistrates, the French way provides few checks against abuse of judicial power. Regardless of how many times Kepel condescendingly reminds his American audiences that France has not experienced a terrorist attack since the '95 Metro bombing, is this really what we want for the US?

January 10, 2010

These past few weeks have seen an avalanche of annoying second guessers, awkward mea culpas and an insidious slow-bleed of embarrassing information on bureaucratic missteps preceding AQAP's failed operation against Flight 253. If you google "intelligence failure" at google news you can see how this is playing out in the American media. Not pretty.

The poor folks at Waq-al-Waq have been paddlingupstream against a current of idiocies. They deserve a round of applause.

My favorite report of the Flight 253 cycle comes via FoxNews. Is it accurate? I have no idea. Is it plausible? Oh, hell, yes!

In the end, it was the usual bureaucratic nonsense that happen here, not a failure of "proper analysis" (whatever that is).

Lost in the cacophony of Flight 253 hysterics, was a recent Playboy article that explores another massive intelligence failure, albeit a woefully under-covered intelligence failure. Back in December 2003 the entire IC was jacked up on a perplexing threat. I can remember various high-level meetings and briefings, and a general sense of doom around the office. Well, Playboy Magazine, has an article on the massive intelligence failure that precipitated that moronic slip into hysterics. Warning: it is a Playboy article and probably won't make it past employer internet filters. Open it at home.

In a related, if under-reported, story: the December publication of a stinging report on the state of our intel capabilities in Afghanistan by Major General Flynn, et al, has caused a bit of a fuss in the blogoshere.

Mike -- aka my boss at Current Intelligence -- makes a good point about the dangers of COINophilia.

Defense strategy is not my game, but can I make a suggestion? The floundering Afghan strategy may also be a symptom of another failure. If I'm not mistaken, preparing for two simultaneous wars was a strategic imperative of 90s-era Pentagon policy. Well, 2001-present has seen just such a situation, but we've been woefully unable to balance the two. What happened to the two-war strategy?

November 11, 2009

Despite numerous arrests, convictions, reports of recruitment activities, and general vile behavior, the United States' small but very vocal Salafist-Jihadist (SJ) community saw its first inspired terrorist attack on US soil last week at Fort Hood. Numerous British and US reports paint a picture of a man who was active in this small, mostly virtual community. As Jarret (and Jihadica and Jawa Report) report, Hasan's violence has been met with elation in the US SJ community and on English language jihadi forums:

Bottom line up front: On the English-language, pro AQ websites, Nidal Malik Hasan’s attack at Ft Hood is being hailed as a victory for Islam and al-Qaida. The participants involved in the discussion see this as the opening shot in what they hope to be a long and bloody war in the United States.

These reports also highlight the key role of Anwar al-Awlaki, an American scholar of Islamic law who was once touted in the local press as a young, moderate leader of Northern Virginia's burgeoning suburban Muslim community. This while the FBI was investigating his connections to several of the 9-11 hijackers. Interestingly, anyone who has been monitoring the US-based SJ community was well aware of the centrality of Awlaki's role in it. After he fled the United States, he landed in Yemen and has been running an "American"-language blog (written in prefect idiomatic American English) since 2007-2008 (I'm working from memory here). His posts, audio and video commentaries, and fatawa, were prominently displayed throughout the US-based SJ community. That he has only now come to the awareness of many in the military and intelligence communities, is more evidence of the appalling mediocrity and endemic bureaucratic indifference that defines the policy and analysis industries here in Washington, DC.

Since it emerged in earnest back in 2005-6 with a collection of blogs and websites, America's SJ virtual community has expanded its presence to include active members of Scribd,Archive.org, and Youtube. However, it appears to be more talk than action. Reports following the arrest of Tarek Mehanna and 2 associates, make this small circle of terrorist wannabes appear to rather hapless. Most of the global SJ action remains in the Middle East and South Asia. Arabic and Urdu are still the primary languages of SJ ideology. The US network's only real religious authority has been the commentary and fatawa of al-Awlaki.

The Fort Hood attack has changed all this, however. It's clear that Hasan was very active in the US SJ community. He communicated with al-Awlaki, and there are now reports that he was talking to others as well. His 2007 power point presentation on Islam is the crystallization of the SJ ideology, expressed in American English, intended for an American audience.

There is good news here, if you can call it that. Hasan's attack may have happened too soon in the SJ community's development. The community still lacks authoritative heft it needs to be taken seriously inside the global movement (like a "Blind Sheikh"). By "coming of age" too soon, it may doom itself to jihadi caricature. That may change in the next 5-10 years as recently convicted Salafist-Jihadis are released from prison, having had many years to study and delve deeper into the justifications for violence. It's hard to predict what if any will be the impact of this cadre of radical American Muslims with prison cred, but I can practically guarantee that it will shock our policy and intelligence communities.

April 22, 2009

I noticed that the UK Telegraphreported on the content of The Pest's new jihadi journal.

There is also a warning against visiting "un-Islamic" western gyms including LA Fitness with their "music, semi-naked women, free mixing and the danger of showing off".

Here in the US, I didn't see any mainstream reporting on the journal. However, Thomas, Aaron,Jarret and Rusty all commented on it after its release.

By the way, you can find the journal here:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/13978807/Jihad-Recollections-Issue-1

I find it interesting that the only content generally reported in the *mainstream media* -- and quite frankly, within the IC -- are the paramilitary articles. Yet, I see the emerging threat not in the paramilitary content, but in the theological content. The majority of the daily material produced by the small, but always energetic, Salafist-Jihadist community here in the United States is related to the theological concepts that characterize the movement such as hakamiyyah (sovereignty of God), and tawhid (monotheism).

The Pest's friends such as "Abu Sabaya" at http://iskandrani.wordpress.com/ are dedicating a lot of their efforts creating a regional Salafist-Jihadist milieu, a particularly American version of the movement that stands in unique contrast to the surrounding popular culture, both Muslim and non-Muslim. Individuals like "Abu Noah" spend most of their time on dawah and devotional matters (ibadat), not matters of violent jihad:http://www.scribd.com/Abu_Noah

The paramilitary content is a staple of jihadi journals. They're the indirect progeny of the first post-9/11 jihadi periodical, Al Battar Training Camp. Al-Battar was the brainchild of the AQAP's first generation of leaders, like Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin (see http://www.archive.org/details/abdul-aziz-almuqrin). But even the early journals like Voice of Jihad and Al-Battar dedicated a lot of their content to the jihad of the pen -- polemics, poetry, justifications, expositions, and the rare fatwa -- not the paramilitary content.

I don't want to downplay the significance of the paramilitary material. I use it all the time when producing certain analytical reports. However, perhaps there should be more effort at dismantling the unique theological character of this small movement before it becomes a well-organized American movement.

April 05, 2009

I know, I know. I've been remiss in my duties to post an Around the Web, and now I've been writing one for what feels like a week. It's going to take you about a week to get through it, too, but I don't want to hear any whining. It's a slow week in most offices. If you can catch up on your fantasy baseball picks, you can read this post.

We start with Jihadica, and the squibs from hell: Thomas surveys recent jihadi publications. They also have a roundup of their recent Workshop in Oslo (Part I and Part II). Excellent work all around.

Three of them, who lived in Naples, are though to be Islamist radicals sympathetic to the radical 'Takfiri' ideology...The three radicals had already been involved in falsifying documents to aid jihadist groups.

Meanwhile the Financial Times throws some cold water on all this talk of Islamic finance saving the world. [This talk concerns me, because the vast majority of people who know known nothing about Islamic finance.] (via Aqoul)

And the Times of London is reporting on something that happened, what? Two weeks ago?

Holy Spicolli! Abu Muqawama is an actual...guy. I thought he was just a blog.

In Stage One, the agency (in this case the FBI) embraces radical Islamist front groups. In Stage Two reality sets in and said agency withdraws their cooperation with groups, once understood that they share the same goals as AQ. In Stage Three these "moderate" groups start making bizarre accusations hoping to test and intimidate said agency. In Stage Four said agency will apologize for something it's not doing and cave to all demands.

So where does the money go? This recent Reuters list of "Gulf Arab foreign investments" gives you some idea. (via The Arabist)

I welcome to the club of "blogs she reads":

Shariah Finance Watch

http://www.shariahfinancewatch.org/blog/

And a jihadi blog (via The Pest)

http://millatibraheem.wordpress.com/

Flash: there are Salafi groups in the Levant, according to MEMRI there's a new Salafist-Jihadist one in Gaza, and two S-Js reported killed in Gaza.

Speaking of Africa: The Pest of all people pointed out the novel qualities of a current release from AQ's Somalia branch. It's an all-English video, featuring an American muj, rapping, or something. More at Jawa Report, Danger Room, and others including here and here.

The Pest's post is here: http://revolution.thabaat.net/?p=1096

You can find it here: http://www.archive.org/details/kmen-bradle

The video does suggest that there is an audience for this jihadi vileness in the US, and belies the commonly acknowledged trope that "our" Muslims (ie, the US) are not as radical as "their" Muslims (ie. Europe). Perhaps, but then, how do we know?

Over in Yemen, Waq-al-Waq notes a recent article in AQ's periodical Sada al-Malahim that provides some "good background" on KSA's 85 Most Wanted.

And MEMRIBlog reports that Yemeni officials have their own Most Wanted list

What about the analog version of the group? Al Qaeda Today: a Policy Forum luncheon hosted by The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. (PolicyWatch #1477: Special Forum Report)

Drew has a post on a recent study that challenges the work of Robert Pape: Decision Processes of a Suicide Bomber

Question to the audience: How many suicidebombings in a row before it's called an offensive?It must be Spring.

March 31, 2009

My friends love cheap gas, and I love not hearing them whine about high gas prices. The current global economic downturn may create cheaper prices at the pump, but there are two unintended consequences of inexpensive crude.

First, capital investment in new capacity (ie the ability to explore, drill, extract and transport fossil fuels) greatly decreases, which is the topic of this post at MEMRIBlog. When industry members pull back from improving or replacing current capacity now the chances for the industry to respond to an inevitable upswing in demand greatly decreases. It makes it almost inevitable that when the price does go up with demand it will be even higher then the previous surge.

Another consequence, less understood, will be the inevitable rise in a new generation of Gulf-based jihadis. Despite popular myths regarding who actually joins the global jihadist movement, it is precisely the bored, educated middle class kid, who is targeted for recruitment. With a significant economic downturn in the regopn, these kids will have no job prospects. Some will seek jihad in any number of today's active fronts.

Terrorist activity is a lagging indicator of global economic stability. During the global energy malaise of the 1990s we saw a great influx of young, educated, mostly middle class men, seeking jihad action in any number of regional conflicts, like Kashmir and Afghanistan. Those young men became very dangerous to US interests in the early 00's.

Now there appears to be a perfect storm of circumstances that could be a another breeding ground for terrorism. The economic downturn will leave many young Gulf men -- just now coming of age -- unemployed, and thus with the incentive to join the global jihad. A protracted situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan will no doubt attract many young men interested in the training and, quite frankly, looking for a little adventure. Add to that the inconsistent and almost half-hearted approach to managing a counter-jihad message, and you have a toxic mix that will inevitably produce more young jihadis, not less. We probably won't feel the affects of this young generation for at least five years, perhaps a decade, but there will be effects, much like September 11th itself.

March 29, 2009

Crossroads Arabia links to a Gulf News report on the public confession of AQAP leader Mohamed al-Awfi.

Riyadh: Mohammad Al Oufi, the surrendered field commander of Al Qaida
in the Arabian Peninsula, has disclosed about the plots and plans
prepared by intelligence agencies of some foreign countries to strike
the Kingdom's oil installations.

If we're to take this report at face value then apparently the Iranians have successfully insinuated themselves into the Salafist-Jihadist movement from Hamas to Al Qaeda. I'll be honest: I'm skeptical. The sources for this in particular report appear to be all government operated, and the confession itself could have been acquired through torture or threats. Gregory has many more reasons to be skeptical. Iranian influence is so strong within the movement that apparently they are dictating Al Qaeda operations? Er, okay.

As of late, Iranians have been accused of arming and supporting numerous Salafist-Jihadist groups (all Sunni, if you didn't know). Sure, it's possible. As the old saying goes: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Iranians have mastered this strategy. It's on display in Gaza right now. However, the perfunctory nature of the accusation in this case doesn't fit into the usual knot of cash, oil, personalities, foreign interests, theological influences, and tribal culture complexities that characterizes practically every ongoing geopolitical issue in the Gulf.

Regardless, if true, doesn't this then constitute an opportunity for our military and intel leadership to use this cozy relationship in order to undermine the credibility and sincerity of the global Salafist-Jihadist movement (MB, AQ, HAMAS, other groups) in its entirety? After all, it would be hard for them to raise the black flag of Sunni-centered jihad when they're actually slaves or hired hands (which one is worse?) to Shiite masters.

March 15, 2009

Rusty at JawaReport suggests that Bin Laden could be surfing the web, because of a reference to al-Maqdisi's website in the current audio.

I'm in a hurry as I'm doing this from the airport, so I won't go into all the implications, but the first one should be obvious: bin Laden has online access, wherever he is.

A cave with broadband? It's possible. A generator and a satellite uplink is all you need.

But Ockham's razor suggests the simplest and most obvious explanation is the most likely: that bin Laden is somewhere with preexisting internet access, like say, a penthouse apartment in Karachi.

And if he's surfing the web, it may be that he's in a place where web surfing is commonplace, like a big city. Rusty suggests Karachi. However, it could be argued that Bin Laden is just working from second hand briefings or printouts from the site, and not from personal experience surfing the site (most of the site's docs include its URL). I saw this all the time when I was a CT analyst. Senior government managers whose extensive web experience included the whole of SEND and REPLY in Outlook and the occasional fantasy football site would "brief" an audience on this or that program's web tools. Lord help his briefer <ahem> if the guy actually received a question from the audience.

I still support the good doctor's hunch here, because it's mine, too. AQ's media production has inadvertently offered tantalizing hints to Bin Laden and Zawahiri's whereabouts. For instance, the little birdie singing in this 2006 Zawahiri video suggests a backyard bird (one whose song is so familiar that the audio guy didn't "hear" it). A backyard bird, like a sparrow or a wagtail of some kind, suggests a city where you're more likely to see backyards and enclosed gardens. There was also a more recent example from a Dr. Z video that included the sound of passing trucks. Not much, I know, but something.

My hunch goes as far as to suggest that at least one of these fine fellows is watching al-Jazeera from a safe house in Rawalpindi or another Eastern stronghold of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba. More than one AQ operative has been picked up in this region. It makes sense from a logistical perspective, too. One of the group's leaders is working the tribal areas, building and maintaining those much-needed relationships. Meanwhile the other is covering the group's flank maintaining the much-needed relationships with the Pakistan government's sympathetic corps. Regardless, I doubt either of them is in a cave. There's just too much work to do.

I know, I know. It's just a hunch on a blog, and worth about as much as you may assume it's worth. Who knows we could be tracking them right now, just collecting intel on their movements and connections. It happens. I still remember one of the funniest lines an FBI SA (and former NYPD detective) ever said to me regarding his vile, money-laundering, terror-supporting target: "that guy doesn't flush the toilet without me knowing it." However, I don't think we would sit on such a target for too long. The political implications are just too great.

That's not to say that extremists don't ever use Web sites to reinforce their messages but that "self-radicalization and self-recruitment via the Internet with little or no relation to the outside world rarely happens, and there is no reason to suppose that this situation will change in the near future."

It also found that "much of the jihadist Web presence was about 'preaching to the choir'" and that "it is largely ineffective when it comes to drawing in new recruits."

After examining a variety of ways to block, filter, or remove offensive sites, the report found that "many of the filtering technologies that are currently in use are either too crude or too expensive to operate" and that they fail to deal with the conversational part of the Internet." Even though it may be possible to "remove, filter or hide content that is available from relatively static Web sites," such efforts will be largely ineffective when it comes to "chat rooms, instant messaging, virtual worlds and networking sites." Like the rest of us, it seems as if terrorists have discovered Web 2.0.

March 05, 2009

I had three random thoughts this week. Let me rephrase that: I had three random thoughts this week that you may find interesting. There were plenty of others, but I'm sure you could care less about my condo decorating angst or a list of Manhattan food joints for Ubiwar. So, in no particular order:

1. For AQ central the 2002-2004 time frame may be interpreted as the group's reformative era.

Background: The Cairo bombing last week had me doing some interesting collection work, and I came across this 2004 report by Reuven Paz, written soon after the 2004 Sinai bombings. In it he translates a 2004 "analysis" piece published in Sawt al-Jihad that includes this passage:

- The Sinai attack was only the first of several forthcoming attacks in Egypt, and is part of a clear strategy approved by the Mujahidin in Arabia, Iraq, and Egypt. The Jihad in Iraq and Egypt should be viewed as the ropes to strengthen the Jihad in Arabia.- The next steps are the beginning of Jihad in Arabia, namely Yemen and Kuwait on the one hand, and the unification of the North African Jihadi groups in Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Mauritania, and the Sudan, on the other.

Ever so brief commentary: It's a general statement, but it does appear to have a bit of prescience to it. Zawahiri did work his turban off in subsequent years to see at least some of that come to fruition. This also dovetails with the two fatwas (WMDs and Petroleum), the emergence of al-Zarqawi (and their opportunities in Iraq), and other factors from the period. It makes energy infrastructure attacks a key goal of whatever phase they are currently in.

2. Did anti-money laundering efforts after 9-11 lead AQ, and other radical Islamist groups like Hamas, to accept Iranian support?

Background: This is based on personal experience (briefly supporting money laundering cases at the FBI, and subsequent curiosity-driven research), but until Israel's incursion into Gaza, I was unaware that Iran had infiltrated so deeply into Hamas' logistical and operational framework.

Ever so brief commentary: I never saw evidence of this influence. Granted, my access and experiences were limited, but things Iranian would have stood out. They weren't there. However, they are there now. Iranian influence inside Egypt was a personal surprise. I recall a few week's back seeing an image from an Ihkwan sponsored rally in Egypt where some participants were holding up signs with Nasrallah's image on them. Could the possibility of a rising Shia influence within certain segments of the Salafi movement create irreparable fitna?

3. Is there another Peninsula plot afoot?

Background: A recent posting of key AQAP docs to Archive<dot>org mirrors two other occasions (see below) when the same or similar documents were posted without much context. In both cases, massive arrests followed within weeks.

Ever so brief commentary: It's hard to say why this material is getting posted. I can't identify the intended audience, and I don't have the context. However, experience from 2007 (Bin Rashid's fatwa was reposted on July 31) and 2008 (AQAP material was posted in March, I believe) suggests to me that this kind of posting has operation qualities to it. It could be a signal. Is it possible another round of arrests may be on the horizon? Or another attempt at attacking energy infrastructure? Last year's massive round of arrests included suspects who entered the country under cover of Hajj pilgrims. The Hajj happened in December, if I'm not mistaken. Time will tell.

Reading this Thomas Hegghammer review of a French language study of the current of Apocryphal theology in Islam, I was reminded of a particular columnist's hilarious jab at "Kyoto cultists:" that the problem with said global warming fanatics is that the "end of the world's nighness is never quite nigh enough." I think that could be said for most millenarians.

Hegghammer has also been busy browsing the periodicals section of the jihad and recently brought us an update.

In other book reviews, there's a look at a little known attempt at an African caliphate: http://ibnayyub.wordpress.com/2009/02/19/the-african-caliphate/

In a recent meeting with the Director of CIA Information Management Services, we reiterated our view that all unclassified, non-copyrighted publications of the Open Source Center (which is managed by CIA) should be made freely available to the public.

Oh, and that BBC News piece: The "schism" that that say is "evolving" in Pakistan has actually been around for, oh, about 1500 years. You can't have "sectarians" until you have schism. Shouldn't the Brits know something about this?

January 07, 2009

I came across this unfinished essay I wrote earlier last year…It's not Schubert, but I thought some of the ideas resonate and may pick them up again some time in 2009.

Thinking with the enemy

On a March evening in 1928 in a schoolhouse in the provincial city of Ismailiya, Egypt six men offered Hassan al-Banna their fortunes, if he would guide them. They decided to form a group, and the “Al Ikhwanul Muslemoon,” Muslim Brotherhood, was born. Later al-Banna would write, “We determined on solemn oath that we shall live as brethren; work for the glory of Islam and launch Jihad for it.”

The Muslim Brotherhood is acknowledged as the father of practically every jihadist group in the world today. Al Qaeda got its start in that schoolhouse. There continue to be strong ideological connections between Hassan al-Banna’s learned and articulate writing and Ayman al-Zawahiri’s polemics. And yet do policy makers and members of our intelligence community know much about the ideology of the Brotherhood and its offshoots? Can they articulate that ideology with the same comprehension they once knew the Soviets?

For starters it cannot be understood outside of its deep, enduring Islamic roots. “We are united to serve the cause of Islam,” Al-Banna wrote, hence the group’s name. Eight years later, in a letter to then Egyptian king Farouk I, he implores the king to establish an Islamic state rather than a secular one, “it would be inexcusable for us to turn aside from the path of truth -- the path of Islam -- and to follow the path of fleshly desires and vanities -- the path of Europe. Along the path of Europe are to be found outer show and cheap tinsel...But the path of Islam is glory, impregnability, truth, strength, blessedness…” A group founded as the “cause of Islam” as its purpose should be understood in the context of Islam, without that much consideration to its roots, our picture is woefully incomplete.

Despite violent crackdowns, leadership executions, long jail sentences, and numerous dissolutions over the past 80 years, the Brotherhood is more important than ever. Numerous western governments have identified the mosques they run, the businesses they control, their media houses, and their worldwide leadership. And yet there are no in-depth studies of what makes the group so resilient. Is it possible that the same resilience exists in Al Qaeda and its offshoots? We don’t know. The question has implications for our long-term strategy against Al Qaeda’s global movement. If the answer turns out to be Yes, then we will have to rethink our understanding of enemy and how he views his place in the world, and more important, how he fights his wars.The rest is just random notes

For Al Qaeda, intelligence is a critical operational resource. Its vigorous collection, scrutiny, and dissemination within the organization have proven fundamental to its capacity to engage in carefully crafted acts of terrorism...

AbstractHezbollah has become a powerful yet destabilizing force in Lebanon, affecting internal stability, allowing Syria and Iran dangerous influence, delaying peace with Israel, and complicating the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Moreover, it forces the United States to struggle between traditional support for Israel and newfound support for Lebanese democracy...

Examining the Case for War: Allegations of Iranian Interference in IraqPhilip Giraldi

Abstract

Iran poses two fundamental challenges to the United States. First is its alleged program to develop a nuclear weapon, which is currently being negotiated and which might be managed and contained through concerted international action. Second, and more threatening in the long term, are its roles as a regional hegemon and as a participant in the political development of neighboring Iraq...

The Regional and International Implications of Kosovo IndependenceGordon N. Bardos

AbstractThe support of the United States and some European Union countries for Kosovo's unilateral declaration of independence has in many ways contributed to a deterioration of the security situation in southeastern Europe...

In this two-part exclusive report, Salah's lawyers recount for the first time the details of their client's labyrinthine case. ...Part II focuses on the post-9/11 period that unfolded under the George W. Bush Justice Department, starting with Salah's indictment in November 2004, continuing with the two years of contentious pretrial preparations and hearings, and ending with the trial itself. As in part I, the legal dimensions of the case are emphasized, as are the government's maneuvers to advance new standards governing the admissibility of coerced confessions and secret evidence at trial and to manipulate other established principles of the U.S. criminal justice system.